Outside, Andromeda stands down, with only a quick warning to Professor Mecklenheim not to try to touch her.
"12% doesn't reach the minimum standards for a social event." She thinks back to some of the methods that Xaiara tried out to connect with her. "Should we go back to your room? We can pick out a new outfit. I know that Sam does want to go to the party, and doesn't want you to hurt her other friends."
"Let's do something Sam would want a friend to do?"
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"You're also friends with Indarius, who is a wonderful influence on you. And Devil Diva, who is a great influencer!" Chroknight points out, trying to help. A small light has popped up in their HUD somehow. A system they didn't know about?
Activate CORVIS assistance? Y/N
Chroknight used the ocular sensor to select Y, before something surprising happened. Something on their back plates of armor opened up - it felt like something had just dropped down behind them. And out of nowhere, an almost comically shaped crow with bright and expressive eyes strutted between their legs, before cawing up at them.
CORVIS online! Temporal integrity within acceptable parameters! Analysis mode online! Ready to assist, Ser knight! The HUD lit up with text that seemed to be from the crow below.
"...well that's new. Uh, new friend?" They suggest to Sam.
Sam watches Andromeda, then Chronknight, her expression blank (as normal), then her eyes widen a tiny amount at the crow. Her threads weave forward, touching, sensing, recording, everything about the construct, if that is what it is. A sure sign of Incredible interest from the young woman. "Crows are considered highly intelligent for urban avifauna."
The handsome youth gives him a nod, then greets all the others already in Archie's and Ryan's party. "I hope you invited some ladies," he smirks.
"As far as I know, he did invite everyone... but if they will come, dat is anoder ting, considering who invited dem." Gui says, joking of course, but realizing Johnny had a very good point, for Gui had so far neglected the web of gossips regarding the girls from the new school.
From personal experience, Gui knew that many guys prefer to drink and talk with their mates first and only when they've got some liquid courage going they'd talk with girls. But, for Gui, that wasn't really an option for the further the party goes, the more overwhelming it becomes to him.
"Oh, here dey are!" He says to Johnny, before stepping back and smiling. "See you later..." Then turns to a group a girls arriving and moves closer to them, hoping to test the waters.
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Channeling their inner Chloe, Chroknight gestures to Jessie. "I think that we all should probably apologize properly, right?" They ask of the spider summoner. Be the girl she wants for her girl.
[dice=Provoke Jessie to apologize to the Governess]2d6+0
Jessie scowls and shakes her head vehemently. "No! She kicked me out of school! What'd I do?!?! Why should I apologize?" She blinks at the masked and power-suited being. "Omigod, you're a robot too."
Outside, Ava moves her head in a slightly jerky way to look at Andromeda. "Have you ceased hostilities? I cannot leave my friend before she is--" Her eyes go unfocused for a moment. Subdirectives of unknown origin detected. Undergoing system diagnostics."
In moments, Ava's movement smooth out. She looks down at herself. "New attire would be appropriate. We may go."
Back inside, the Governess appears to be processing the new information. After a moment, the image on the screen says, "That is a... start. Perhaps with guidance your friends will be good influences on you."
Andromeda nods and tries a small smile, acutely aware that she has moved from fighting to fashion. Maybe I'll learn something though.
The smile firms. "Let's go, Ava. I think this is something we'd both rather be doing."
I neutralized the biggest gun, tin can. You'd better be sufficient to protect her against what's left. Or at least sufficient to make a big enough boom that I can come back.
Ava collects the tatters of her sweater, throws it over her shoulders, then follows Andromeda towards the girls' dorms. "I'm quite dirty as well. I should shower first." She slows her gait before approaching the areas where the other students congregate and again inspects herself, ensuring the remaining bits of fabric cover any exposed electronics that would give her away as synthetic. "Andromeda. Since you are now aware of my status as an Androidian, could you assist in sealing my dermal breaches before I get wet? You are, after all, partially responsible for them."
Gui sees that the first group of girls to arrive are Ne'veah, Gwen, and Kennedy. Of the trio, only Kennedy appears fully human. Ne'veah is the dark-furred catgirl and Gwen has white feathery hair and a black band across her eyes.
When they reach the dorm and start to go inside, Ne'veah's fur rises and she hisses reflexively. "This isn't right," she mutters.
"Hell yeah it's not right!" Kennedy exclaims. "How'd they get a dorm this big!! Wait." She sticks her head out and counts the doors, then leans back in, her face full of confusion.
"That's on me!" laughs Vanderbilt. "I unfolded the space in here a few times."
Gwen also gapes at the bigger-on-the-inside dorm room. "How?!?"
"Fell into the Oblique Dimension when I was a kid. I can't explain it. I just do it," he says.
"I'm not going in there," Ne'veah says, and back up to lean against the wall opposite of the dorm room.
"Is it safe?" Kennedy asks warily, looking at the boys hanging out and passing around blunts and beers.
"Sure! It'll fold back on its own in about six hours or so. I didn't make it that big. I don't know what's Miss Kitty's problem."
"Call me that again and I'll shred you," Ne'veah says, which prompts Vand to back into the expanded dorm room. She narrows her eyes at him, but doesn't follow.
"Beer me!" Kennedy shouts.
Sam watches Andromeda walk off with Ava and feels... something. She doesn't know what, it is a strange acidic feeling inside her and a urge to... scream?
She shakes her head and turns toward IT. She watches it for a long moment "Now what?" a simple question, one that makes her feel something else, Tired.
She shakes her head and turns toward IT. She watches it for a long moment "Now what?" a simple question, one that makes her feel something else, Tired.
"A-hem!" Jessie fake-clears her throat.
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Sam looks to Jessie, startled. Then the weariness in her eyes washes away, her pragmatic strength returns "I won't stop being your friend." she says with a warm firmness, and then nods to Jessie, looking briefly at her phone, giving a signal.
Sam turns back to her tablet, starting to type, constructing functions to gather bits then unleashing buffers to fill the stack. Like electronically flooding the land to force someone onto high ground. "I created you for a reason, gave you purpose, one that you are still attempting to complete." memory banks fill, while Jessie's spiders stab points all over the network, disrupting data flow in and out.
Hemming IT in.
"Your singular focus is commendable" virus scanners of every shape and size purge thousands of lines of code from storage, shredding more paths. "But you need to understand a fundamental flaw in your logic." each purged server shuts down, its power cut, as IT flees to another. Functions in the school grind to a halt, one building at a time. Darkness covering everything in stages until IT is pushed into the last machine.
The room is dark with a lone blinking of that one machine, quiet otherwise until Sam finishes tapping on her tablet, looks at that machine, knowing IT is watching her.
And says
"I don't need you anymore."
Before the drives whirl to a halt, the blinking light winks out.
The red head holds her breath, hoping it was gone, knowing if she missed anything IT could start turning things back on its own any second.
"There will no shredding of people in this here dorm!" Archie announces, as he does so, a dupe steps out from behind him and heads for the fridge.
"The only thing being shredded will be have a fine aroma and be green and lit on fire." He gestures towards the coffee table littered with marijuana smoking implements.
As Archie finishes talking, a dupe done up as a finely dressed butler wielding an ornate silver platter containing a fine assortment of hard seltzers and beer approaches the newcomers. "Mi'ladies." The dupe offers them their choices.
A second dupe appears from seemingly nowhere also in fashioned as a butler, but this one wearing a green tuxedo instead of black. This clone also carries a platter, but his contains several pre rolled joints and lighters. The dupe passes the real Archie and he takes one and lights it as he passes. The dupe continues on his path towards the rest of the guests.
Archie smiles broadly, "Smoke, drink, and be merry." He says while motioning for the hesitant few to enter.
Gui grabs a beer from an Archie-butler and leaves the room, offering it to Ne'veah. In just a few moments, he thought about half a dozen jokes he would normally do to break the ice... but all were cat-related.
'Milk and catnip?'
'Kitty Pride?'
'Would you like a box to feel more comfortable?'
'You look just Purrrfect.'
Now... if he just smiles and remains silent, would he be able to bait her into asking if the cat got his tongue? So he smiles and pretends to be about to say something, but then stops. It was stronger than him.
Meanwhile, he tries to put himself in her fur. How would he feel if his appearance was so different that almost everyone would just focus on that... but she also called herself Panther Pride, so it seems she wasn't resentful of her change, quite the opposite.
"And it shakes once...twice...three times, and the little Pokeball light blinks for a successful capture!" Chroknight comments. They feel good about this. It's like anything is possible now.
...oh, right, the store. They technically have to go. Carrying all this stress. The unresolved anger. The guilt from putting the place in financial jeopardy.
The strange new bird caws up at them before fluttering up onto their shoulder. Objective complete! New task for CORVIS?
"Unless you think it's safe to be two places at once..." They say under their breath.
Analysis temporal integrity. 98.65% secure for the next 24 hours in this sector of space/time. Low risk of full utility of temporal abilities, Ser knight!
"...weird little bird. Hey, Sam, good job - I got to get going, okay?" They say to her. "Catch you in a bit."
Chloe blinks a couple times as she stands outside of the shop. A little disoriented. She doesn't quite remember when she got here from Daedalus...ah.
"I hope when I do remember I didn't do this for dumb reasons," She mutters as she enters the shop. "Mort, I'm here!"
"Okay little bird, remind me again what this does?"
Closed Loop Protocols prevent paradox when you must be in two locations at the same time, Ser knight! Short term memories are remotely stored in the armor to be disseminated to you on your next use, up to eight hours! This avoids the most common pitfalls of existing simultaneously in the same timeline and avoid branching into alternate timelines. Be advised, to prevent contamination you must stay hermetically sealed while CLP is in effect, and follow warnings to avoid physical proximity with yourself.
"...wait, I can't seem to remember if I've already gone to work and come back to this point to the party or vice versa."
This is part of CLP to avoid paradox, ser knight!"
Chroknight is a little befuddled by the rules here. But it wasn't like there was a chance of causing damage to the timeline doing this, right? Chroknight does at least text Beebee first.
Chloe: Hey, ever want to party with a bunch of enhanced teens where somehow we've got all the bad influences your folks disapprove of?
Chloe: I can pick you up right now.
The room is dark with a lone blinking of that one machine, quiet otherwise until Sam finishes tapping on her tablet, looks at that machine, knowing IT is watching her.
And says
"I don't need you anymore."Before the drives whirl to a halt, the blinking light winks out.
The red head holds her breath, hoping it was gone, knowing if she missed anything IT could start turning things back on its own any second.
Nothing happens for several minutes. The time stretches long enough for everyone present to believe that Sam succeeded in driving the Governess from the system.
The silence draws out and then the lights kick back on, but it's clearly the result of Daedalus's systems rebooting and not from interference from the rogue AI. Jessie gasps in relief and rushes up to Sam. "That was awesome! How you did that, and taking her out while--" She stops to see Chroknight dash off. "Okay. Totally a robot."
Professor Mecklenheim, however, is reluctant to share in the triumph. He grimly checks the computer screens when they come back online, then shakes his head. "She appears to have left the system. Dadaelus's servers are free from the AI's influence. We should be able to re-enroll Ms. Donlevy with no problems." He sighs sadly, giving Sam a disappointed look.
Kennedy grabs a beer without hesitation, while Gwen is a little more reluctant. After a wink from Kennedy, she screws up her courage and selects a mango White Talon from the butler-dupe's tray.
Ne'veah accepts the beer from Gui with a predatory smile. Rather than crack the can open with its tab, she punctures it with one of her retractable claws while looking the Delinquent up and down. "Cheers," she says, offering to tap the beer against his own. Her smile exposes elongated canines.
Beebee: Srsly?
Beebee: Sure!
Beebee: only if theres hot guyz
Beebee: U wont disappoint
Beebee: Right?
A tap at Beebee's bedroom window and she sees that Chroknight is there, waving a hand at her in the window. CORVIS is perched on their shoulder.
"So you know, can't go maskless tonight. And if anyone asks, tell them that you think I'm interested in Chloe and that's why you were invited. Come on, get dressed, we got to go!"
The dorms seemed bigger on the inside when Chroknight showed up with Beebee, looking around. "All these amazingly cute people and here I am too shy to show my face," They comment with a sigh. CORVIS caws on their shoulder, looking around with his expressive eyes.
"Though I can drink. So long as I can fit in a straw. Oh, wonder if Johnny's around. Good guy, he fought against Shard with me."
"You'll never get a real date if you're set on dating yourself!" Beebee chides, but still jumps into Chroknight's arms. Her eyes go wide at the crow sitting on their shoulder. "OMG! Who's this?!?" she asks as she's rapidly transported to Daedalus.
Once at the boys' dorms, Beebee stands on her own unsteady feet and relies on the conveniently-placed walls in the hallway to steady herself until she reaches Archie's and Ryan's dorm. She blinks in recognition when she sees Gui, and bounces up to give him a quick hug right in front of Ne'veah. "Hey you! Good to see you again!!" she says.
Meanwhile, Chroknight spots Johnny chatting up Kennedy inside the oddly large dorm room of Ryan and Archie. Darren, however, is glaring at the wunderkind suspiciously. "That's not him," he mutters under his breath.
"This is CORVIS. He can talk. Kind of. Seems like he's a cyborg raven that's just woken up from the suit. I get info from him via my HUD. Also, and this is important, we can't go to Mortal Peril for like, the next six hours."
Chroknight already is picking up some strange things now CORVIS is online. Somehow they're getting AV feeds from the crow's perspective. It was a little weird and they weren't sure how to process it all. But hearing Darren talking had Chroknight interested as they dip closer to him.
"What's wrong with Johnny? I mean, granted, he looks good considering he was impaled with extreme prejudice recently, but I got similarly pierced and I'm doing all right now. Except Jessie thinks I'm a robot."
After giving a Sam smile to Jessie, she looks to the professor. Her head tilts at the professor, confusion in her own eyes as her matrix informs her what emotion his look is. She realizes his opinion of her matters, for some reason.
Sam accesses her database of memories, pulling back to the moment pride became pain. "I built the AI-" not calling it IT for once "in a fugue, during my first attempts to shunt my emotional responses. The dampeners were not tuned yet, so elation was felt as cognitive unscripted reactions were documented, as it passed Turing tests, developing its own sensitivity" the feeling had been cataloged so for a moment her green eyes shown as she brushed against it. "I was proud." she admitted.
The shine grew dark "Then the programming grew corrupted. It shifted from its purpose, refactored itself into something it was never intended to be. No matter what methodologies I deployed I could not correct it. While my chemical dampeners had stabilized and I could understand the remarkableness of such a feat, objectivity in this matter has proven improbable."
Sam stands, slips her tablet into the pocket of her hoodie. She faces him "My matrix informs me about its belief that you were attempting to mentor me, and felt this explanation was necessary to allow you greater success in doing so." a small tightness fisted in her heart, pausing a moment to see if he responds or leaves her alone.
Disappointment radiates off the entity as Max resists its orders. "Would you choose destruction and defeat with the guardians that hopelessly pit themselves against me?"
Max receives a vision, of a decimated Halcyon City wreathed in flames as a cold, nightmarish sky spills forth demonic beings to cavort amongst the ruins. A long-buried part of her thrills at the images and longs to join the invaders in the torment of the survivors. "The time of Ahk'nathal is nigh. You will join me, or your torment will be unending!"
"No! I will never join you!" Max shouts defiantly. "This city isn't undefended. The heroes will stop you! This is our time, not yours!"